Trinity Theatre Company opens "The Cocktail Hour," its first play of 2024, on Jan. 19 (postponed from original opening date of this Friday) in the Mission Valley Shopping Center.
Trinity Theater Company was started in 2012 by Sean Boyd while he was a senior in high school.
"It was about friends, family, and the community getting together, having some fun, and enjoying the magic of live theater together," Boyd said. "Everyone talks about how theater is hard to break into, and so we were able to foster an environment where the experience was not the end all, be all. It was the passion. It was the willingness to put in the work and creating that place that individuals can go to create, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the hundredth time."
Last year the company moved to a new location replacing the Payless Shoe store in Mission Valley Mall.
"It's 66 seats, and it's a lovely little black box theater," Boyd said. "I'm really thrilled. And the mall has just been so welcoming."
Jaeonnie Davis-Crawford is excited about the new location since her day job happens to be in the mall.
"Trinity, moving closer to me has been extremely convenient," Davis-Crawford said. "This mall in particular, has been making a turn towards the community. I think a local coffee shop opened up. We have two stores now that are based on local vendors. They're like hubs for you to come and buy from local vendors, which I think is beautiful. So, I think the addition of Trinity here really turns it from the old image of the mall as a hub for different corporations to hawk things at you to a place where you can come and connect with your community."
It also means the theatre sees a lot of foot traffic compared to a more traditional theater space.
"It's actually one of the really exciting parts of being here," Boyd said. "Our doors are open from 10:00 a.m. To 9:00 p.m. which has allowed us to think about nontraditional times and events that can be happening during the daytime. And that gives us a chance to talk to people about their passion for the theater. We do a living room readers program on Sundays where it's essentially just a book club for adults, where we read a play a week and enjoy it. We put all the roles in a hat and we say, here we go. And that's a really easy, low commitment and an opportunity for individuals walking by to engage. It's really fun to welcome in the walking traffic."
The theme for the 2024 season is the life of the party, so what better place to start with A.R. Gurney’s "The Cocktail Hour," a play about a play called "The Cocktail Hour," and how it stirs up family drama. The play was so personal that Gurney promised his parents never to perform it in their hometown. Davis-Crawford also felt a personal connection to it.
"It's hard to explain the emotions I felt upon reading it without airing out all of my family drama," Davis-Crawford said. "But specifically, the conflict of communication within your family is something that I really resonated with in this part of my life journey. We use art a lot of times to touch the world around us and translate things that are happening to us in a way that is more digestible. 'The Cocktail Hour,' there's some generational trauma there. There's the ubiquitous nature of a family gathering and how volatile that can be. And I think feeling seen is something that other disciplines don't bring to the table as much as the arts do. And I think that our humanity, our minds, our souls, whatever you want to call it, those things need to be nurtured, too. And I think the arts are the ways to bring that nourishment to our."
Trinity Theatre’s "The Cocktail Hour" was set to open this Friday, but just postponed the opening to Jan. 19. It is set to run through Feb. 4 at Mission Valley Shopping Center.
